40 pages • 1 hour read
William FaulknerIntruder In The Dust
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1948A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Race and Justice
Much of Intruder in the Dust is concerned with race and justice. Race is a key motivating factor of the plot, as Crawford kills his brother but believes that he can have another man condemned for murder on his behalf due to the inherent racial prejudice in the society. He believes white people will readily accept that a Black man committed murder, and that a mob will lynch Lucas before any real justice can be carried out. Crawford makes a gamble based on his actual experiences of the way in which “justice” has been enacted in the past, specifically, the way in which actual justice is denied to African American people. Crawford is very nearly vindicated because, were it not for the intervention of Charles and others, Lucas would have been killed by the mob. As per Crawford’s prediction, the mob forms as if through muscle memory, seeking to impose violence on an African American man in the name of extralegal “justice.” Justice in the novel is predicated on race, whether it is weaponized against Black people or denied to them.
This misinterpretation of justice unsettles Charles, and he speaks to Gavin about his unease. His uncle is a lawyer, a man who is not only well versed in the technical intricacies of the justice system but also in the practical application of the law. Gavin speaks authoritatively about the way in which the mob will wield “justice,” and Charles comes to realize that the actual law means very little to the townspeople. The violent inevitability of the mob exposes the hypocrisy and inadequacy of the US justice system: Jokes are made about hanging Lucas; no one even pretends that there will be a trial. Meanwhile, those defending Lucas must operate outside the actual law for justice to be done, digging up graves illegally. Justice is a lie that the community tells itself, an elaborate pretense that is selectively wielded to satisfy social expectations concerning race.
Lucas is saved by Charles but there is no sense that justice actually prevails. The mob goes unpunished, and Crawford dies by suicide before he can be tried for murder. Charles, meanwhile, is left with a lingering horror that the mob would happily have killed Lucas and then declared justice to be done. To the mob, he realizes, justice is not about the correct prosecution for the crime of murder but about the reaffirmation of racial hierarchies. No real justice is possible in a society that tolerates such acts of brutal racist violence.
Debt and Pride
Throughout Intruder in the Dust, debt and pride are frequently linked together. Lucas, for example, is presented as a proud man who refuses Charles’s offer of money for the meal he has provided. The money offends Lucas’s pride because it contains an implication that he needs money from a white person who is younger than him. By refusing the money, Lucas can maintain the balance of power in the relationship and avoid any sense of indebtedness to the boy. This is why he also sends gifts to Charles after Charles sends gifts to him. Any form of debt to Charles would, to Lucas, be an injury to his pride. This refusal, in turn, hurts Charles’s pride. He is surprised that an African American man could be so proud, which itself is an indication of the innate racial bias in the society. Lucas’s refusal to accept Charles’s repayment leaves Charles feeling indebted to the Black man, which makes him uneasy. He may not be able to pinpoint the precise nature of his unease, but Lucas, who has been made keenly aware of his status in white society, understands it all too well.
When Charles watches Lucas being dragged into the jailhouse, he feels a twinge of responsibility. The debt to Lucas that he feels is no longer monetary. In the past, Lucas helped Charles, not only by feeding him and sheltering him but also by challenging his racist assumptions and biases. Now, Charles has an opportunity to help Lucas. Lucas’s actions and his unjust persecution show Charles that he cannot be proud of his society, so he has a debt to himself, to Lucas, and to everyone else to pursue reform and justice where he can. Charles’s determination to repay this debt drives the action of the novel.
A week after he is released, Lucas comes to Gavin’s office to settle his debt to the man he nominally hired as his attorney. Through this act, Lucas establishes himself as just another client in a fair and balanced legal system. He is a man exchanging money for services, engaging with the economy and the legal system just as a white man might do. Gavin and Lucas debate the amount owed but Lucas wins their exchange by paying in pennies. Then he demands his receipt. He uses the commercial exchange to reassert his pride, turning himself into just another customer, regardless of his race.
The Future of the American South
Intruder in the Dust is set in the American South in the 1950s, a time and place that may be free from enslavement as a legal practice but is very much blighted by the vestigial effects of enslavement as an ideology. Racial segregation is rampant, and different races are beholden to different laws and different expectations of how the law will be applied. When Lucas is arrested, for example, rumor is enough to condemn him, because he is not white. Furthermore, his seemingly imminent lynching is a subject for humor. Numerous white people make jokes to the sheriff and to Gavin (both embodiments of legal institutions) about the mob that will murder Lucas. In the racially segregated South, an accusation alone is enough to condemn an African American man, while white people enjoy the privileges and protections of an institutionally biased legal system. To the white people of the town, the idea of an African American having legal rights is still a joke, nearly a century after emancipation.
The novel shows how the past lives on in the present. For example, when Charles is riding with his uncle to the cemetery, they look through the windows of the car and see an African American man working in the cotton fields. The image is striking to Charles, a reminder of the recent past when enslavement was the driving force behind the local cotton industry. The local economy is still structured in the same way, with rich white landowners exploiting the labor of Black people, the “people on which the very economy of the land itself was founded” (97). Enslavement may be outlawed, but the exploitative economic system remains in place. Gavin comments on his nephew’s observation, noting that the work must go on. The farming will continue because the South’s institutions and material conditions have not changed.
While the novel and its characters often look back in time, their obsession with the past belies an anxiety about the future of the American South. To Gavin, the ramifications of enslavement are a regional issue. The South lost the war, he notes, but southerners resented the imposition of laws from the North. They have clung to the racial hierarchy and the racial segregation not because of an innate racism but because of lingering tensions between North and South. Therefore, reform imposed from outside will not succeed. Such change must come organically from within; southerners must implement their own system of racial reform. This is why Charles’s relationship with Lucas is important to Gavin. This relationship, he believes, is an example of how empathy can be build a more egalitarian world. Charles’s campaign to save Lucas shows that racism can be addressed through empathy and experience. This, Gavin believes, is the organic model for a better future in the American South.
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By William Faulkner
